War

Syrian Crackdown Takes Away Her Family; One by One

The Syrian crackdown has cost 4,000 lives by a U.N. estimate. Maimouna Alammar offers this account--beginning with a strange phone call from her brother--of how it's been devastating her own family.

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"I don't know. He's left the house."

"When?"

"He had been detained. After they released him, he left the house."

He sneered with mockery. "Oh, detained? Does that mean he has an opinion and a conscience?"

I didn't reply. Did an agent in a police state know the meaning of having an opinion or the significance of having a conscience?

He said, "Your husband killed three government security agents."

"My husband didn't kill anyone. My husband doesn't believe in killing." Osama and I met through attending nonviolence study circles. His whole life has been about believing that people can change themselves and their world nonviolently.

He snapped, "I will kill you."

'Killing Isn't the Answer'

Emar stirred in her crib. "Killing isn't the answer," I said.

He said, calmer, "You're against killing? So what's the answer, in your view?"

I felt that my words woke the human side in him. I said, "We shouldn't shed blood."

Maybe he forgot himself for a moment. In a police state the police are not supposed to engage with citizens; it might bring a sense of humanity to the interchange. Emar gurgled.

The man leaned over her crib--that's when my heart dropped--and picked up my cell phone, which lay on my bed.

Emar smiled at me, eyes wide and curious. If this were happening in the city of Homs, my baby likely would have been killed at this point in a home raid. My 7-year-old cousin, Zuhair Alammar, was killed while playing in a field in Dara in May by government security agents just like this one.

"What do I press to find your husband's number?"

I didn't say anything. I looked him in the eye, trying to call out any goodness in him.

"For shame," I said, picking up Emar, thinking, over my dead body. I looked at him over her soft cheek. "Please don't."

He said, "Then isn't it also wrong to kill people?"

I said, "We didn't kill any. We don't kill people."

He replied, "OK. I'm leaving her with you, just to show I'm human."

I lucked out. Layal Askar, Ola Jablawi, Hamza Khatib, Tamer Share, Ibrahim Shayban, my cousin Zuhair--these are a few of the murdered children of Syria; names I know both from personal contacts and press reports.

Maimouna Alammar is a graduate student working on her master's degree in computer science at Damascus University. She lives with her husband and child in the suburb of Daraya. This article was translated into English by Manal AlNatour and Mohja Kahf, both of whom live in the United States.